Yesterday the FBI raided the NYC home of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan and seized his phone and electronics.
The raid took place around 6 a.m. and Coplan was home when the agents entered his apartment.
On Polymarket, users can bet on events with binary outcomes.
Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan during the week of the election.© CNBC screengrab via YouTube.
As people place bets on something, the odds of the outcome shift.
Polymarket gained attention during the presidential election for predicting that Trump would win.
Its CEO Shayne Coplan called the site the future of news.
In the end, Polymarket was right about the election if not about being thefuture of news.
It got in trouble over this before and settled a dispute with the Commodity Future Trading Commission in 2022.
It paid a $1.4 million fine.
Polymarket and Coplan said this has nothing to do with Americans using the site.
The public statements from Polymarket and its CEO reflect their notion that the gambling website is more than that.
Coplan sees it as avehicle for news, a way to make sense of a chaotic world.
Notably, the FBI has not raided the home of Tarek Mansourthe CEO of prediction market Kalshi.
Mansour lives in Massachusetts and his site also predicted Trumps victory.
He also made several public appearances during the last month of the election talking about Kalshi and prediction markets.
His home remains unraided by the FBI.
Polymarket has provided value to 10s of millions of people this election cycle, while causing harm to nobody.
Coplan sent a back.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
DOJ says workers in the Philippines completed transactions manually.
